Over the years, the cost of storing data has been reduced as memory technologies have advanced. This reduction in the cost of storing data coincides with a trend to store more data in databases as well as a trend to store data in larger databases. With a growth in the size of databases, the need for efficient methods and systems for locating and retrieving, or otherwise accessing, data therefrom is of increasing importance. Accordingly, what is needed are efficient methods for query processing and optimization.
Data access may use mechanisms such as a table scans and index scans. Generally, an index scan is faster and more efficient than a table scan. Therefore, what is needed are methods for query processing that utilize an index scan, or similar mechanism, to provide greater efficiency, whether in terms of time or hardware resources (e.g. processing, bandwidth, etc.), to process a given query.